Weaving In and Out

A lot went on this week. As you may remember, the mattresses arrived and exploded (under control). Well, Wednesday the table arrived. We put it together and pushed it to one side. Friday the bed arrived. Putting it together was more complicated, but we managed to put the bed together that day.

Saturday we put together the trundle. 

(It looks like DH is the only one working, but someone had to take the photo, and I did help.) The trundle was easier to put together, because the construction was identical to the bed.

I still need to make pillow covers for the bed, but in the meantime, I just folded Joanie's quilt over the pillows. I put the new pillow cases on the pillows and used the little bags the bedding came in as covers for some smaller pillows we had. 

This will give you a better idea of how the room looks in use. (The other pillows were from another bedroom. They will be more useful here.) The old folding table was hard to use for storage, because the folding mechanism was in the way. It was also too big.

DH needs to put up the curtain rod for me. When the sun is at the back of the house in the morning, we have nice light in this room, but when the sun shines on the front later in the day, we have to close the room-darkening shades to keep the house from heating up, and then you can't see anything. The curtains will help keep the room from heating up so much if I want to be working in there during the afternoon and need the light to see.

The Kevät is finished! Here it is blocking:

I chose to block the bottom ribbing in points because it was expedient. It wanted to do that anyway, and it only needed to be pinned in 6 places. I used my lace blocking wires for the sides and shoulders.

Here it is blocked and getting acquainted with some of my other pieces of clothing.

Here's how it fits. (Excuse the crepey arms. I'm an old lady.)

I finished the dish mat while we talked with the kids during our regular Sunday Zoom call.

The loom is finally in use, but not before much groaning and gnashing of teeth. If you remember, I wound the warp last week. The different kinds of fiber didn't cooperate with each other the way I hoped they would, and they made a big mess when I tried to warp the loom. It was great practice, though. I had some Peaches 'n' Cream cotton yarn, so I wound the warp again, using only the cotton yarn. I still had some issues, but I managed to get past where I had the mess. I've been using the Craftsy class Floor Loom Weaving as my guide. One thing the teacher mentioned that I hadn't remembered from when I used it to make the project was that all the heddles should be leaning to the right for a right-handed person and to the left for a left-handed person. If they are the wrong way, you need to turn them upside-down, not just turn them over to the other side. I remembered we had taken the heddle frames out of the loom to move it (twice), so I decided to check. I found one set that were all on the same way, but the whole set was up-side down. That was easy to fix by taking the frame out and replacing it the correct way. ALL the others had some the right way and some the wrong way. They must have been this way when I received the loom! Here you can see what I'm talking about. Look at the two heddles in the center of the photo. The heddle on the right is set up for a right-handed person. The other one is for someone who is left-handed.

I took out each heddle frame, took off all the heddles and checked each one before putting it back on the heddle rods. When I got to the third and last frame I had to do this with, I noticed the paint on one end but not on the other. See the one with no paint? It's upside-down compared with its fellows. I discovered that when you have all the painted ends together, all the heddles will be facing the same way.

It should have been easy to realize. It did make it easier to finish the third set. Duh! I don't remember anyone's mentioning this before, but they probably did. Threading the heddles was easier than I remembered from previous projects. This must be why.

Next was to put the beater bar back on with the reed in place to sley the reed. (That black thing in the bottom of the photo is a sleeping Rocky, not a discarded sweater or jacket.)

I managed to get all the threads into the reed in the right order, which I found shocking when I discovered I had done it right. However, when I went to tie up the treadles, I discovered that the job was made more difficult because the treadles weren't quite in the right position. I have figured out that the guys had installed the treadle assembly upside-down. See those holes at the bottom of the photo where the screws go in? That's side is supposed to be facing the floor. The treadles needed to be flipped around to be in the right position. 

It's supposed to fit  down on the floor, as in this photo from our old place:

I explained to DH, and he unscrewed the two bolts holding the base of the assembly, so we could flip it over. 

I managed to tie up and throw a few picks to even out the warp, so I'm finally off to a good start. Now I'm going to weave a narrow border that will hold the fringe at each end of the rug.

I didn't need to undo anything when we fixed the treadle assembly, other than to untie the treadles.

In other news, you may have heard about the terrific heat wave that has descended on the Pacific Northwest. It isn't quite as bad here as locations lower in elevation and closer to the coast, like Portland, but it's still expected to be over 100ºF for the next few days here where we are. However, the difference between sun and shade is much greater than most places. This is what we had yesterday evening, as the sun was getting low and shining right on the front porch.

You may remember that our furnace went out last Fall and we replaced it with a unit that included air conditioning. It's a very efficient and quiet unit, operating with a fraction of the energy older models require. Here's a photo of our thermostat inside the house at the time it was so hot outside.

We have it set on 78ºF, and it pretty much stays there. Upstairs it's a little bit warmer, so we run our little portable air cooler in the bedroom, which keeps it comfortable.

What a week! And DH has an unpleasant medical procedure today, which requires that I drive him. It's supposed to continue to have record-breaking temperatures, but I hope this week goes more smoothly.

Where's my blog: As you may know, the entity that notifies people when a blog they follow posts will discontinue notifications in July. This motivated me to link my blog to Bloglovin', as I did some time ago with The Doll's Storybook. If you are following my blog want to continue following after July, I recommend you go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Just finished the Dish Mat, but there's still the Brioche Shawl Feathers shawl. I will be working on it again, now that the Kevät is done.

What's on my sewing machine: Its cover. However, I will be making the pillow covers and revising the curtains soon.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. No progress this week. (Are you kidding?)

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Look-alikes. Pippa wishes she were more like the other dolls.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to The Rose Code by Kate Quinn.

What's in my wine glass: Crystal Range Barbera 2019. Excellent.

What's my tip of the week: We occasionally eat vegetarian hot dogs with buns, but so seldom, we need to freeze most of the hot dogs. I put the hot dogs, two-by-two, into sandwich bags and tuck each pair into a larger zippered bag with two buns. When we're ready to eat them, I just pull out the pair of dogs and buns, just the amount we need.

Where's my book: Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook is available from Amazon worldwide. Also available from BookBaby, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. Royalties go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. The three stories in the book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. The stories (and links to them) are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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